The fighting in the southwest corner of the cornfield became desperate. The pockets and cartridge pouches of the dead and wounded were ransacked, and soldiers handed muskets to those with better shots at the enemy. The smoke, heat and roar of battle deluged the senses, obliterating all rational thought. Men laughed and giggled, screamed and cried. All sense of time was lost, and even the desire for survival was set aside. All that mattered now was the regiment and its colors.

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Lieutenant Colonel Bragg was hit by musketry and severely wounded. Command of the 6th Wisconsin devolved on Major Rufus Dawes, a native of Marietta, Ohio, and a fighting officer if ever there was one. On Dawes’ left, Duryea’s brigade was pulling back from the fence along Smoketown Road through the cornfield–Gibbon’s flank was in the air. Phelp’s 1st Brigade moved up in close support of Gibbon as the Iron Brigade wheeled through the bloodstained cornfield parallel with Hagerstown Pike and swept the brave remnant of Jones’ and Grigsby’s Confederates with a deadly fire. The hard-hit Rebels broke and ran the Union gauntlet toward sanctuary in the West Woods.

Across Hagerstown Pike, Jackson sat on his horse in perfect Christian peace as bullets and shell fragments whizzed and whined about him. Couriers and staff officers ran to and from their commander as he sat immobile, seemingly immune to human frailties. Hood would have to go in–he was the only reserve available.

Lawton ordered Hays’ brigade into the gap left by Duryea’s withdrawal. Hays’ men plowed through the cornfield and fired an enfilading volley into the thinning ranks of the 2nd and 6th Wisconsin. The combined efforts of Hays’ and Lawton’s infantry halted the Federal advance and stabilized Jackson’s front.

Hays’ Louisiana Brigade had done its usual ferocious fighting in support of Lawton, but their right-wheel maneuver had exposed their right flank and the fighting had depleted their ammunition pouches. The brigade was helpless when Colonel Richard Coulter’s 3rd Brigade came storming out of the corn stubble, too late to help Duryea, but determined to sweep the field of Rebels. The Federals’ opening volley hit Hays’ line, piling corpses one atop the other. One of the casualties was Colonel Henry Strong, commanding the 6th Louisiana, who was killed while mounted on his beautiful horse. An officer running to his assistance was hit twice, and the command was forced to withdraw, leaving the colonel’s body and possessions behind. A Union infantryman commandeered the colonel’s gloves, and following the battle Alexander Gardner, famed Civil War photographer, captured the colonel’s dead horse for posterity.

It was now just before 7 a.m. Doubleday’s 1st Division had been halted on the south end of the cornfield near Hagerstown Pike, while on his left Rickett’s 2nd Division was being fed into the battle piecemeal and taking a terrible pounding from the Confederates who’d been able to rush troops to trouble spots.

Smoke from the artillery and musketry inundated the field. Soldiers in the thick of the fight were covered with the black, greasy stain of burnt powder, which gave a deadly, ghostlike appearance to the participants. The pungent smell of trampled vegetation, sweat, powder and bodies imposed a surrealistic perception that survivors carried with them the rest of their lives.

Above Dunker Church all that was left of Jackson’s line was a remnant of the old, trusted Stonewall Brigade, under the watchful eye of “Old Jack” himself. The division commander, General Jones, was with the brigade, trying desperately to hold when he was wounded by shrapnel, and command of the division devolved on Brig. Gen. William E. Starke. Starke was moving his brigade out of the West Woods in support of Jackson when he was mortally wounded, and command of the division devolved in turn on Colonel Grigsby. The assault of the two Confederate brigades petered out under a hail of shot and ball on the west side of the pike, where the infantrymen formed behind the fence bordering the road. They fell there by the score, and within a short time their position became untenable and they withdrew into the West Woods.

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